Economy of China and Economy of Japan
Q: What brought you to U.Va.?
A: That's easy. I was following a beautiful and intelligent woman: my wife. Two years ago, I was teaching at Union College in Schenectady, New York, a really nice liberal arts school, and my wife was working at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Both in the same state but that is the most I can say for it. They are 150 miles apart. It was no fun and about two and a half years ago, Virginia had tried to recruit her and she said, "No, that doesn't seem to make much sense for me, but here are some names of some other people in the field." And they came back to her after six months, and she said, "What I really need is two jobs in one city." And Virginia said, "Oh, well we can work with that." So we both came down and we both looked for jobs and we both found jobs, and we were so happy.
Q: What is the best thing about teaching economics?
A: I think the best and worst thing about teaching economics is that the primary data on the subject matter is immediately available to all of us because we live in the economy. And yet, the discipline expresses our understanding of the economy in abstract ways that seem distant from that reality. So it's a pleasure but also a challenge to always connect up those two things.
Q: How did you gain an interest in China?
A: I usually say it's because when I was very young my parents had a family friend named Owen Lattimore who was a China specialist who taught at Johns Hopkins University and knew a lot about China and working in the State Department to help the State Department understand China better during the McCarthy era. He used to come to our house in the fifties with friends.Once he came with the Dilua Buddha of inner Mognolia, who was wearing long yellow robes and our little cocker spaniel came yap, yap, yapping out from underneath the stairs where she usually stayed. The Dilua Buddha looked at our little dog--he spoke no English, and he smiled this very radiant smile and he raised his hand.Our little dog, a very nasty little dog, went back and curled up and put her head on her paws. I said, "whoa, that's interesting." So maybe at that point, I said, "What's going on there?" But that didn't really come to any kind of fruition until college years when I had a free course and I thought, well let's take Chinese because I enjoyed languages. I always enjoyed languages and I found Chinese to be a lot of fun and just sort of rolled down hill into China studies.
Q: What is the strangest thing that happened in China last summer while preparing for the launch of the new summer program this year?
A: Taking the long taxi ride from the airport to Lhasa. There is some tension between people who are ethnically and indigenously Tibetan and people who are ethnically and indigenously Chinese, and this has partly to do with the histories of Tibet and China. Well, my driver was Tibetan and he was giving a ride to another guy who was ethnically Chinese. As we drove back, we were talking about all different kinds of things and then as we crossed a long river, I said, "Those PLA soldiers must be bored standing there all day." And the Tibetan guy said, "That's because they're always there," and the Chinese guy said, "That's in case your Dalai Lama comes back." He was joking, and the Tibetan then started joking too. He said, "Yeah, he is like our king." Sort of joking back in forth about something I thought was a very sensitive subject. There wasn't the level of sensitivity that I had anticipated. So that was the most startling thing that happened to me.
Q: What is the best deal you have ever gotten?
A: I think that we can look no farther than Brillig, where I just bought these two glorious books for less than two dollars. I just can't believe this. This will go as a present to the daughter of our foster daughter, whom I am going to see in March, who was a former student of mine who we adopted. And this is the "Analects of Confucius" in the Waley translation, which I have always wanted to get. It was sitting there in Brillig on the 85 percent off shelf. It was a dollar and 95 cents. I was so embarrassed. So that may be the best deal I have ever gotten but I have gotten a lot of good deals.
Q: What would you do with one million dollars?
A: That's a nice question. Oh dear. I have to say that my first reaction of course as an economist is that I would capitalize it. So you see, I am wringing all the joy out of it. It would be hard to spend one million dollars quickly by myself. Let's pose the question this way -- you've got a million dollars and you've got to dispose of it within twelve months. Then I think the reaction is you can't really spend it on yourself so you need to do something interesting with it. One of the glorious things about my life right now is that I feel financially very secure. I am not wildly wealthy. My wife would be laughing at this point. Within the University of Virginia, I would consider trying to use this money to leverage the university in the direction of being more diverse and multicultural. I am aghast at the low level of resources for example in the Asian and Middle Eastern Languages and Cultural departments. That is a whole department. Asia, Middle East all the way from Japan down, around South Asia all the way up to Pakistan. This whole sweep, one department and they live on shoestrings. So it would be nice to leverage the University. And we have had a lot of black/white tension and crises this past year and I think that it is not just random. I think that you could maybe find ways to use the money to provoke change.
Q: What kind of car do you drive?
A: We drive a 1995 Volvo sedan. It's got 135,000 miles on it so we've got a back-up car, a Toyota Camry that used to be my wife's car when I was commuting. That Volvo went back and forth from Schenectady to Ithaca a whole lot.
Q: Do you play any sports?
A: Well, my son would say no, but I think of myself as a squash player and a tennis player. But since coming here, I have not yet found regular partners for these sports and that's not good. I love to swim, but that is not exactly a sport. That is a pastime. I love to canoe, hike and backpack.
Q: What music do you listen to?
A: Lots. Sort of in order of music that I love most, I think we would start with Renaissance music, baroque music. I sing with an a capella concert group on Saturdays called Zephyrus. So I love early vocal music of that sort. I also listen to Tori Amos a lot and folk songs and country western sometimes when driving on the road. And I also love classical music.